


orpheus (and you would’ve had an empire, but all i could ever hope to give you was my heart)

by cuneifire (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 10:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19424380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/cuneifire
Summary: "The past is the past, Steve. Don't look back. There's nothing for you there."





	orpheus (and you would’ve had an empire, but all i could ever hope to give you was my heart)

**Author's Note:**

> Canon divergence post Winter Soldier, because I'm pretty sure Steve and Tony never fought Bucky together. Or something.

Steve is bleeding when Tony drops down next to him, panting hard. He's kneeling, so it's less obvious, but he's leaning on the shield like it's a theater prop. The enemy's out of sight but not out of mind. 

"Rogers," he says as soon as he touches down. Steve turns toward him. Shoulders drooping, head bent, blood on the ground. Everything about him screams exhaustion. 

Tony hesitates, then talks. 

"Why aren't you fighting to kill?" Are the first words out of Tony's mouth, because this Winter Soldier guy- he's fighting like _murder_ and Steve is just defensive, holding up his shield and never hitting hard enough to do serious damage. And Tony's tried fighting him before, Cap's serious punches bend metal- these ones barely make scratches. 

Something's up, he thinks, and he's right, because Steve immediately averts his eyes. (Tony doesn't know if anyone's ever told him this, but Steve is a terrible liar.)

“Cap, if this guy’s got something on you, I need to know _right now,_ because if you haven’t noticed, he’s kind of trying to _murder_ us-” 

“Tony-” Tony barely notices the crack in Steve’s voice until he sees his expression. Jesus, Tony has seen Steve pull some serious angst faces, but this has to take the cake. 

“-He was my best friend. Before-” And he doesn't say, _before I was a superhero, before people loved me implicitly,_ but Tony hears it loud and clear. “-Before it all. I thought he died. HYDRA got him instead.” His voice is drained of emotion. He's got nothing left to give. 

Tony pauses. “Not sure what’s worse. This guy’s killing it out there.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, but his thoughts are elsewhere, his usually brilliant smile gone bitter. Tony goes to reach a hand out to him, and pauses. He's not the person Steve would want to console him. 

There’s a pause, maybe half a minute where they’re both gathering their breath, looking out for the next attack. 

Then Steve talks. 

“I can’t kill him, Tony.” He says, and Tony turns to face him, wide-eyed. He opens his mouth to say something but Steve gets there first. “He was my first friend. My only friend, for the longest time. And, I feel so out of place here, if there’s _anything_ I-we could do to get him back-” Steve brings his eyes up from the ground. “I would do it. And I won’t kill him so long as there’s still that possibility.” 

Tony glances at Steve, who’s finally facing him properly. His cheek is splotched purple, the circles under his eyes are dark. He's _bleeding._ Fuck. 

Tony has a lifetime of experience in showbiz. He smothers the foreign emotion that feels strangely like anger without a second thought, and when he talks, his voice comes out perfectly calm. 

“Steve,” He says, because Tony never calls him by his first name to his face. “The past is the past. Don't look back. There's nothing for you there.”

Steve’s eyes narrow, expression going all affronted. Tony holds up a hand before he can continue on whatever train of thought he’s currently jumped on. “This guy-” he says, gesturing at the rubble surrounding them, “-is _dangerous._ And if we don’t incapacitate him he will most definitely do more than that to us. He’s not the man you knew, Steve. Or if he is, you are a _horrible_ judge in character. And,” He says, swallowing because this is the hard part, this is the part where Steve stuffs his head full of vibranium if he gets it wrong, “If you keep looking back you’ll never tear your gaze forward long enough to make a future. And a real one, Steve, not just some pale reminiscence of what you thought your life might be. I don’t understand you,” And that’s a lie, sometimes he’s pretty sure the problem is the exact opposite, _he knows Steve too well, but not always, not really-_ “But having a shitty past?" He tapped the arc reactor. “I got you covered. And you know what doesn’t help? Hindsight. It’s 20/20 and 100% useless.” 

Steve is staring at him like he’s lost his mind, which, okay, he can have that one, but… this has been bothering him.

He started noticing it a few months back, how Steve would always linger on what he'd lost, how his gaze would stick to the past like it'd been superglued. He'd come across him in the mansion once, eyes watery as he looked over a picture of- someone, he hadn't stuck around to see, but Steve had made a soft sound, like he was on the verge of tears. How he always talked about the 1940s like it was home like this was just- some sort of stint. 

And Tony… doesn't like that. 

Because, well, he’s thought about it. What would’ve happened if Steve hadn’t been frozen in the ice, if he’d come back from the war and picked up where he left off, had a family and two kids and a white picket fence and all. Thought about never knowing Steve as anything other than one of his dad’s friends, the same people who always ignored him and looked at him like he was nothing, a splotch of sauce on their otherwise stain free tablecloth. He thinks about never really _meeting_ Steve, just kind of knowing him, never being able to properly stand at his side, to fight with his, have his back.

He thinks about all that, and he thinks, _fuck that._

“Think about it, okay?” He says, and Steve is still staring at him like he’s a totally different person, which hey, Tony Stark, see which mask he’ll pull out of the closet today, isn’t it a surprise, but he’s spent enough time with his demons and the bottom of a bottle to know how well going over all your failures constantly ends. And he doubts a constant, live, threatening presence really helps. 

But he knows Steve is a stubborn son of a bitch, so it’d be best to just leave him to it. 

Steve’s still looking at him when he takes off, and maybe if Tony had been paying closer attention he would’ve seen something there in his eyes, but as it is, he's got his eyes fixed on the horizon, wondering what's next. 

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to yell at me about canon incongruity or debate me on the value of hindsight or whatever in the comments. Hope you liked!


End file.
